


Sixty two days

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Anger, Bargaining, Denial, Depression, Gen, Hope, and waited, and worst of all them, tw: mention of amputation, what if, what if Graves didn't know that his aurors weren't coming, what if he waited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 20:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15155174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: So long as they get him out he’ll give them anything they want.





	Sixty two days

_Shit - Boss can you hear me - Graves!_  
_What the fuck was that? Who set off the explosion?_  
_Aurors, sound off. Has anyone got Graves?_

The first day, Graves braces himself up on his elbows and curls his back against the weight of stone and tile pressing down on him. The air is stale, more dust than oxygen, and his magic flickers against his skin to fight off exhaustion. His leg is crushed somewhere behind him - he can’t feel it anymore. The numbing charm was probably seven kinds of bad idea, but Graves has never been good at healing and it distracted him too much to leave as it was.

Besides, it’s only meant to be a temporary thing.

He drags himself forwards inch by laborious inch and every time he stops for breath he thinks of a new way to curse abandoned subways, cockatrice fighting rings, raids gone wrong -  _over powered blasting potions_ , he doesn’t think he’s cursed them yet, or the trigger happy morons that detonated them.

He keeps his ears strained for any sign of the others and stubbornly works his way out from under the rubble that could easily have killed him, and this is the first day.

The second day, Graves leans against the smooth tile of an undamaged wall and wishes he’d brought something to drink. His leg is a mangled mess and the tunnel he’s in is blocked off from the main subway. He’d break out and rejoin the group but the ceiling groaned alarmingly when he tried - it’ll be far easier for them to come to him than him to race the collapsing tunnel and make it out to them. He fires off flash-bangs every seventeen minutes and scowls at the jokes he knows his second will crack when she finally rescues him.

The fourth day, Graves finds the only stable piece of wall in his entire damn tunnel and melts his way through it. The skin of his hands blisters - he’s lost his wand somewhere in the rubble - but he keeps going, dragging his leg behind him. With his luck he’ll have burnt his hands raw just in time to watch them break through and chide him for not staying put and letting himself heal, but he’ll just give them the finger and tell them they’re late and it’ll degenerate from there.

The seventh day, Graves works his way back round to the front of his collapsed tunnel. The rubble is, as he suspected, far easier to move from this side; he’s running on fumes and his magic is all that’s keeping him upright but still, it takes him barely an hour to clear a way through. He’s not sure why he bothered, except to see if it was possible.

There’s no sign that anyone else had tried.

He stares at it for a long time before he sets it aside with an angry shake of his head. He rewraps his bandages and limps his way towards where the exit should be because if he has to save his damn self then he’ll just go ahead and save his damn self, and he won’t waste time thinking about anyone else while he does it.

The ninth day he starts wondering if the reason is that they’re all dead. They  _better_  all be dead. If they aren’t, they will be by the time he’s finished tearing into them because what the fuck, what the ever loving  _fuck_  are they doing that’s so  _damn important_  they can’t come and find him. It’s not like he isn’t broadcasting his magic as loud as he’s fucking able to. If any of them even thought to cast so much as a  _level one tracking charm_  he’d show up like a christmas tree on acid, so  _please_ , he’s all ears,  _where the hell are his aurors_.

The fourteenth day he’s convinced  _he’s_  dead. He’d like to know what he did to deserve this sadistic afterlife, these endless fucking  _tunnels_  that lead nowhere except more cold, more silence, more emptiness, more… More  _more_. Just more. They’re cursed. They have to be. Nothing  _normal_  can go on forever like these do, and if he weren’t so damn tired all the time he’d find the curse and break it and get the fuck  _out_. He’s even prepared to be lenient on his aurors because clearly there’s some next level shit going down, it’s taking them time to get through whatever malicious crap he’s got himself tangled up in this time.  That’ll be it. Hell, if they break him out of the sodding tunnels he’ll probably kiss them or something equally ridiculous. Give them knighthoods, maybe.

So long as they get him out he’ll give them anything they want.

The sixteenth day he gets rid of his leg. It’s a dead weight. It’s dead. He’s dead. Does it matter? He fashions a crutch out of transfigured tiles and keeps going. He should have got rid of it days ago except it was his  _leg_ , he was attached to it. He’d still hoped that if they got him to the healers in time - well. It’s done now.

The twenty first day he sits in a crumpled heap against the wall and waits. His lumos fades out. he doesn’t bother to relight it.

The thirtieth day he sits in a crumpled heap against the wall and waits. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for. Too stubborn to die, maybe. His magic keeps him alive, just, but he’s not even sure it keeps him awake anymore. Who could tell? When he sleeps he dreams of tunnels.

The forty third day he sits in a crumpled heap against the wall and waits.

The sixtieth day he sits in a crumpled heap against the wall and the wall falls away behind him. He jolts into panic and awareness that bring with them a sluggish tidal wave of fear and he squints against the burning light with all the confusion he can muster. He doesn’t understand what he sees (the shadow has teeth that’s him standing there cursing his aurors are there but none of them look his way he can see the sky but he’s still in the tunnels but he thinks it’s the sky the man with his face melts to a dark lord he can see the sky the  _sky_ ) and it isn’t until everything’s done and everyone’s gone that he can start piecing it together.

He saw enough.

And it makes  _sense_  finally it makes - they didn’t know, they were tricked, they didn’t leave him none of them  _left him_  they didn’t even know he was gone

(they didn’t even know he was gone)

_~~they didn’t even notice~~ _

He doesn’t have enough strength to stand but he has enough strength to force down the despair and hope, desperately, sprawled half in his tunnel and half in the ruins of the subway where he can just about see the sky. He flares his magic, what’s left of it, and luxuriates in the smell of the rain and waits, again, to be rescued.

The sixty first day he lies in a crumpled sprawl and waits.

 

_Your director? He’s dead. I killed him when I stole his face. You left him in the tunnel and I brought the ceiling down on him and walked out into your welcoming arms. Does that hurt you? He’ll be barely more than bones by now._

The sixty second day,


End file.
